Film

Righting Wrongs

A Hong Kong lawyer turned vigilante takes the law into his own hands after the system fails him, triggering a collision with a determined cop. Righting Wrongs is a slick 1980s action thriller that blends martial arts, procedural tension, and genuine moral friction. It's for anyone who wants their action movies to ask uncomfortable questions about justice while delivering the goods.

TMDb rating3.8

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Dirty Harry1971

Clint Eastwood's San Francisco cop bends the rules to catch a serial killer, wrestling with whether justice and law can coexist. The template for every vigilante-cop conflict that followed, and it still crackles.

But The pacing feels deliberate by modern standards, and the politics haven't aged into nostalgia yet—they're just there, baked in.

Dirty Harry poster

A Better Tomorrow1986

John Woo's Hong Kong masterpiece about honour, betrayal, and redemption among criminals and cops. The action is balletic; the emotional stakes are real. Peak Woo, and it defined the decade.

But The melodrama is thick, the plot turns on loyalty codes that require patience to follow, and the image quality on most copies is rough.

A Better Tomorrow poster

Police Story1985

A cop risks everything to take down a triad boss, wringing comedy, heart, and jaw-dropping stunts from the same story. Jackie does his own impossible work; you'll wince and grin simultaneously.

But The dubbing can be jarring, the plot is thin scaffolding for action sequences, and some slapstick bits haven't travelled well across time and culture.

Police Story poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Righting Wrongs

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Something you would not have found on your own.

Sonatine1993

Both pit a solitary man against a system that won't bend. But where Jason Chan fights outward, Kitano's protagonist fights inward, collapsing under the weight of code. Same engine, opposite direction.

Takeshi Kitano's yakuza film is deliberately, almost unbearably slow between eruptions of violence. A meditation on loyalty and mortality dressed as a crime movie. Hypnotic and strange.

But Western audiences often find it glacial. Long stretches of dialogue, minimal plot momentum, and a tonal register that won't feel like an action film until it suddenly does.

Sonatine poster
More like this (7)

Lethal Weapon1987

Riggs and Murtaugh bend every rule chasing drug dealers through LA, their partnership forged in adrenaline and wisecracks. Kinetic, funny, and genuinely thrilling—a blueprint for action buddy movies.

But The buddy-cop formula has been copied so much since that the novelty has worn smooth. You've seen echoes of this everywhere else.

Lethal Weapon poster

The Fugitive1993

Harrison Ford hunted by a lawman he can't trust, racing to prove his innocence. Relentless pacing, impeccable craft, and a moral question that drives every scene without preaching.

But It's a thriller-by-numbers, efficient but not experimental. If you need innovation, you won't find it here.

The Fugitive poster

First Blood1982

Stallone's Rambo isn't a superhero—he's a traumatised vet pushed by a small-town cop into circumstances that spiral. Smart, tense, and unexpectedly moving about the cost of violence.

But The sequels turned this into something else entirely, so you're fighting that association. Also, the film's seriousness about its subject can feel at odds with its own action beats.

First Blood poster

The Killing1956

Kubrick's noir about a racetrack heist gone wrong, told in fractured time. Lean, intelligent crime writing that proves you don't need action sequences to build unbearable tension.

But Black-and-white, no martial arts, minimal sound design—it's a thinking person's thriller, which means it asks more of you than recent films do.

The Killing poster

Infernal Affairs2002

A cop infiltrates a triad; a triad infiltrates the police. Symmetrical, clever, and wound tight. It's proof that Hong Kong crime thrillers could still innovate twenty years after Righting Wrongs.

But The concept overshadows character development. Watching it, you're always one step ahead, admiring the architecture rather than living inside it.

Infernal Affairs poster

Q1982

Both trap a flawed protagonist between institutional law and personal survival. But Cohen makes that collision funny and weird, while Righting Wrongs keeps it furious. A wildly different register on identical bones.

Larry Cohen's schlocky B-movie: a giant Aztec bird nests above Manhattan, and a small-time crook becomes the only person who can stop it. Absurdist, inventive, shot on a shoestring with intelligence and heart.

But The creature effects are visibly cheap, the pacing meanders, and the plot synthesis of crime thriller and monster movie feels rickety by design.

Q poster

The Man Who Would Be King1975

Both are about men outside law who build their own justice systems—Jason Chan through vigilante action, these men through outright deception and self-coronation. Righting Wrongs is urgent; this is baroque. A completely different energy, same moral question underneath.

Huston's adventure film follows two drifters who decide to become gods in a remote kingdom. Sweeping, funny, intricate in its moral calculations. Sean Connery and Michael Caine in peak form, fully present.

But It's leisurely by modern standards, skeptical of heroic mythology rather than celebrating it. The colonial politics are embedded without apology, which some viewers will find either bracing or uncomfortable.

The Man Who Would Be King poster

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